Philosophy

Wednesday, May 30, 2012

Book Review: The Power of Habit: Why We Do What We Do in Life and Business | Inc.com

Book Review: The Power of Habit: Why We Do What We Do in Life and Business | Inc.com


Book Review: The Power of Habit: Why We Do What We Do in Life and Business

Author and journalist Charles Duhigg explores the power of habits--including how savvy marketers use them to activate consumer spending.
 
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by Kelly Kollar


The book: The Power of Habit: Why We Do What We Do in Life and Business, by Charles Duhigg; Random House.

The big idea: Habits can be our making or our undoing. Either way, they are powerful. Canny marketers use cues to activate consumer spending habits, and wise leaders create strong institutional habits.

The backstory: New York Times journalist Duhigg has won numerous awards for his reporting.

Your business on autopilot: Duhigg reminds us that business processes and routines are nothing more than habits practiced on an organization-wide scale. If you can get your kids to brush their teeth every night, you can get your employees to provide great customer service.

If you read nothing else: Chapter Four recounts Paul O'Neill's turnaround of aluminum company Alcoa. Duhigg uses the example to illustrate how improving a single habit—practicing safety, in Alcoa's case—ripples out to improve an entire organization. If all companies followed Starbucks's lead and trained employees in self-discipline, as described in Chapter Five, customer service and productivity would soar.

Rigor rating: 9 (1=Who Moved My Cheese?; 10=Good to Great).
Duhigg interviewed more than 300 scientists and executives and consulted many academic studies.
Sixty pages of concluding notes offer a window into the sausage-making process, complete with responses to fact-checking queries.
Leigh Buchanan is an editor at large for Inc. Magazine. A former editor at Harvard Business Review and founding editor of WebMaster magazine, she writes regular columns on leadership and workplace culture. @LeighEBuchanan



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Quotes

"Whatever you can do, or dream you
can, begin it. Boldness has genius,
power and magic in it."
- Goethe
Life shrinks and expands in proportion to one's courage.
- Anais Nin


We are not abandoning our convictions, our philosophy or traditions, nor do we urge anyone to abandon theirs.
- Mikhail Gorbachev


Personally, I would be delighted if there were a life after death, especially if it permitted me to continue to learn about this world and others, if it gave me a chance to discover how history turns out.
- Carl Sagan

"The greatest mistake you can make in
life is to be continually fearing
you will make one."
- Elbert Hubbard


Love is union with somebody, or something, outside oneself, under the condition of retaining the separateness and integrity of one's own self.
- Erich Fromm


Man's main task in life is to give birth to himself, to become what he potentially is.
- Erich Fromm


The most beautiful as well as the most ugly inclinations of man are not part of a fixed biologically given human nature, but result from the social process which creates man.
- Erich Fromm


That man can destroy life is just as miraculous a feat as that he can create it, for life is the miracle, the inexplicable. In the act of destruction, man sets himself above life; he transcends himself as a creature. Thus, the ultimate choice for a man, inasmuch as he is driven to transcend himself, is to create or to destroy, to love or to hate.
- Erich Fromm, The Sane Society


Anything you fully do is an alone journey.
- Natalie Goldberg


Stress is an ignorant state. It believes that everything is an emergency. Nothing is that important.
- Natalie Goldberg


If you are not afraid of the voices inside you, you will not fear the critics outside you.
- Natalie Goldberg



Immature love says, "I love you because I need you." Mature love says, "I need you because I love you."
- Erich Fromm (1900 - 1980)


There is no meaning to life except the meaning man gives to his life by the unfolding of his powers.
- Erich Fromm (1900 - 1980)



The successful revolutionary is a statesman, the unsuccessful one a criminal.
- Erich Fromm (1900 - 1980)




Man is the only animal for whom his own existence is a problem which he has to solve.
- Erich Fromm (1900 - 1980)



There is no meaning to life except the meaning man gives his life by unfolding of his powers.
- Erich Fromm (1900 - 1980)




Sleep is often the only occasion in which man cannot silence his conscience; we forget what we knew in our dream.
- Erich Fromm (1900 - 1980)



Immature love says: 'I love you because I need you.' Mature love says 'I need you because I love you.
- Erich Fromm (1900 - 1980)








US (German-born) psychologist 


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Quotes about Writing


Writing describes a range of activities, like farming. Plowing virgin fields—writing—demands freshness.-David Mitchell
 
The most obvious attraction of quotation is that it gives you a little vacation from writing—the other person is doing the work. All you have to do is type. But there is a reason beyond sloth for my liking of quotation at length. It permits you to show the thing itself rather than the pale, and never quite right, simulacrum that paraphrase is.
—Janet Malcom, The Art of Nonfiction No. 4

 



Life shrinks and expands in proportion to one's courage.

- Anais Nin


 
Truth is the most important thing that there is, and if you lose sight of it, your writing will be destroyed in the end. 
- William Trevor


 
A writer has the duty to be good, not lousy; true, not false; lively, not dull; accurate, not full of error – EB White



Imagine every day to be the last of a life surrounded with hopes, cares, anger, and fear. The hours that come unexpectedly will be so much more the grateful.
- Horace
 I’ve always liked the uniform of a poet. I’ve gone through some nice pajamas - Kay Ryan
 
Even more than appearing clever, the writer had wanted to be profound.-The - Epigraph



 
On LSD: The thing is, it's information—extraordinary and deeply relieving information.-Robert Creeley



 An electrical impulse zings out ricochets in meta-galactic orbits - Itinerary, Adrienne Rich



 The greatest gift is the passion for reading. It is cheap, it consoles, it distracts, it excites.- Elizabeth Hardwick


 
“An Egoless Practice”: Tantric Art


 Childhood is so protean. - Norman Mailer


 With humor you have to look out for traps.-James Thurber




He’d take me to restaurants and things. Showed me jujitsu in a restaurant. Threw me over his head..-Robert Frost
Expand


How to Sharpen Pencils: A Demonstration



I cut the cord. I said, I will do only what I can do, express what I am—that’s why I used the first person-Henry Miller




 

 
I fell asleep and woke up the next morning with the book there in bed beside me, along with my wife.-Raymond Carver



 I think the writer ought to help the reader as much as he can without damaging what he wants to say.-James Jones



 
In the land of the free, one sentence must be as good as another because that is democracy.-Gore Vidal



 I have a longing, not for obscurity—I'm too egotistical for that—but for peace, and freedom from meddling.-Saul Bellow



 There is just one thing I can promise you about the outer-space program - your tax-dollar will go further.

- Wernher von Braun



 I would gladly have traded what I have tried to say for what came off my tongue, naturally. -William Carlos Williams



 

 

  

 
Writing describes a range of activities, like farming. Plowing virgin fields—writing—demands freshness.-David Mitchell

Selected Letters of William S. Burroughs



Truth is the most important thing that there is, and if you lose sight of it, your writing will be destroyed in the end. - William Trevor...

A writer has the duty to be good, not lousy; true, not false; lively, not dull; accurate, not full of error – EB White




I’ve always liked the uniform of a poet. I’ve gone through some nice pajamas - Kay Ryan



Even more than appearing clever, the writer had wanted to be profound.-The Epigraph



 
On LSD: The thing is, it's information—extraordinary and deeply relieving information.-Robert Creeley




An electrical impulse zings out ricochets in meta-galactic orbits - Itinerary, Adrienne Rich:





 
Today I’m a five-o’clock-in-the-morning riser. Although I do stare at the wall a lot – Samuel R. Delany
 

Lunch Poems, Mixtapes, Beats
 
10 Literary Bars in Manhattan!


 
MAD Men: An interview with the brains behind many a MAD parody!
Expand 
 
You can be nasty when you are young, but you really have to be older to achieve bitterness.-Fran Lebowitz




The Martian label means everything and nothing, since I think all writers are Martians.-Martin Amis

 
The D was missing from the sign so that it now read bor ers. - Wings, Lorrie Moore
 

 
in solvency, fiction:
View photo
 
The greatest gift is the passion for reading. It is cheap, it consoles, it distracts, it excites.- Elizabeth Hardwick





 
“An Egoless Practice”: Tantric Art
 
 

 
Childhood is so protean. - Norman Mailer

Odd Corners Round About Brooklyn
 
 
With humor you have to look out for traps.-James Thurber



He’d take me to restaurants and things. Showed me jujitsu in a restaurant. Threw me over his head..-Robert Frost
 


How to Sharpen Pencils: A Demonstration
 


I cut the cord. I said, I will do only what I can do, express what I am—that’s why I used the first person-Henry Miller
 



I fell asleep and woke up the next morning with the book there in bed beside me, along with my wife.-Raymond Carver
 



Which do you prefer: Gatsby (1926) or Gatsby (seemingly 2026)?
 




I think the writer ought to help the reader as much as he can without damaging what he wants to say.-James Jones
 


It is more horrifying when something is insinuated - Javier Marías




Saddam Hussein's publishing deal, Singing Babushki, The Bard of McSorley's, Cupcakes or "Fairy Cakes"?
 
 
I have a longing, not for obscurity—I'm too egotistical for that—but for peace, and freedom from meddling.-Saul Bellow



In the land of the free, one sentence must be as good as another because that is democracy.-Gore Vidal





I would gladly have traded what I have tried to say for what came off my tongue, naturally. -William Carlos Williams














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Quoteas from Paris Review Twitter


Force takes the form of intelligence, and this is my tragedy—and it always has been from the beginning.-Jean Cocteau

Puritan and Protestant America carries less weight in Illinois than in Massachusetts.-Saul Bellow
 
 
Have a great Memorial Day Weekend! Posters from the Paris Protests, 1968


Once you elevate yourself to the rank of a cultural institution, you're in for a lot of trouble.-Saul Bellow
 

THE RACCOON HAVE GIVEN HIM THE UPPER HAND.-Constructive Abandonment



Productivity is a relative matter. And it's really insignificant.-Joyce Carol Oates

 
I was also fifteen and a half, a virgin consumed with the mysteries of sex, of forbidden encounters.-The Fetish
 

As technology advances in complexity and scope, fear becomes more primitive – Don DeLillo

 
Before I began publishing, I’d imagined that pointing out my thefts would be the occupation of enemies.-Jonathan Lethem


Why does everything about the National League look smaller on the TV?-October Baseball and the Meaning of Hurt

 
 
A long project is like a secret houseguest, hidden in your study, waiting to be fed and visited. - John Hollander


Isolation is a necessity, also an acute loneliness and a slight sense of rejection. - J.P. Donleavy



What We’re Loving: Bejeweled Ostriches, Robot Dancers

 
If I were in George’s place, I would kill myself. I’m less than George. George is heroic.-Christopher Isherwood
 
 
I wrote my obituary soon after my college graduation. It seemed as necessary as knowing my Social Security number.

 
Nothing interferes with my writing except my irresolute character and limitations of my talent.-Elizabeth Hardwick
 


I told her I was broke. “Asshole,” she grumbled, and then went around the corner to buy her cigarettes.-314 Bedford

 
Modesty is in order, God knows—facing the universe of sound.-William Carlos Williams
 

What happens if you make a distinction between what you tell your friends and what you tell your Muse? – Allen Ginsberg


Typewriter erotica, Wodehouse Nonsense, Egan twitter story (literally), is Philip Roth crazy?



I have this rubber stamp. It says, IT’S A JOKE YOU FUCKING MORON. I never use it – Kay Ryan  



  • Writing describes a range of activities, like farming. Plowing virgin fields—writing—demands freshness.-David Mitchell


    Selected Letters of William S. Burroughs



    Truth is the most important thing that there is, and if you lose sight of it, your writing will be destroyed in the end. - William Trevor.


    Queen of the Web
     


    A writer has the duty to be good, not lousy; true, not false; lively, not dull; accurate, not full of error – EB White
     


    I’ve always liked the uniform of a poet. I’ve gone through some nice pajamas - Kay Ryan
     


    Even more than appearing clever, the writer had wanted to be profound.-The Epigraph

     
    On LSD: The thing is, it's information—extraordinary and deeply relieving information.-Robert Creeley
     


    An electrical impulse zings out ricochets in meta-galactic orbits - Itinerary, Adrienne Rich:
     


    Today I’m a five-o’clock-in-the-morning riser. Although I do stare at the wall a lot – Samuel R. Delany

     
    Lunch Poems, Mixtapes, Beats
     
     
    10 Literary Bars in Manhattan!



    MAD Men: An interview with the brains behind many a MAD parody!



    You can be nasty when you are young, but you really have to be older to achieve bitterness.-Fran Lebowitz


    Authors in Bathing Suits


    The Martian label means everything and nothing, since I think all writers are Martians.-Martin Amis


    The D was missing from the sign so that it now read bor ers. - Wings, Lorrie Moore

     
    The greatest gift is the passion for reading. It is cheap, it consoles, it distracts, it excites.- Elizabeth Hardwick


    “An Egoless Practice”: Tantric Art

     
    Childhood is so protean. - Norman Mailer


    Odd Corners Round About Brooklyn



    With humor you have to look out for traps.-James Thurber


    America’s Newest Sweetheart


    He’d take me to restaurants and things. Showed me jujitsu in a restaurant. Threw me over his head..-Robert Frost
    I cut the cord. I said, I will do only what I can do, express what I am—that’s why I  
     
    I fell asleep and woke up the next morning with the book there in bed beside me, along with my wife.-Raymond Carver
     
    Which do you prefer: Gatsby (1926) or Gatsby (seemingly 2026)?


    I think the writer ought to help the reader as much as he can without damaging what he wants to say.-James Jones


    In Memoriam: Marina Keegan



    It is more horrifying when something is insinuated - Javier Marías
     


    I have a longing, not for obscurity—I'm too egotistical for that—but for peace, and freedom from meddling.-Saul Bellow


    In the land of the free, one sentence must be as good as another because that is democracy.-Gore Vidal


    I would gladly have traded what I have tried to say for what came off my tongue, naturally. -William Carlos Williams



    • Quarterly literary magazine founded in 1953.
      New York, NY · http://theparisreview.org

      Writing describes a range of activities, like farming. Plowing virgin fields—writing—demands freshness.-David Mitchell



      Selected Letters of William S. Burroughs


      Truth is the most important thing that there is, and if you lose sight of it, your writing will be destroyed in the end. - William Trevor...



      Queen of the Web

       
      A writer has the duty to be good, not lousy; true, not false; lively, not dull; accurate, not full of error – EB White

      I’ve always liked the uniform of a poet. I’ve gone through some nice pajamas - Kay Ryan


      Even more than appearing clever, the writer had wanted to be profound.-The  
      On LSD: The thing is, it's information—extraordinary and deeply relieving information.-Robert Creeley


      An electrical impulse zings out ricochets in meta-galactic orbits - Itinerary, Adrienne Rich:


      Today I’m a five-o’clock-in-the-morning riser. Although I do stare at the wall a lot – Samuel R. Delany


      Lunch Poems, Mixtapes, Beats


      10 Literary Bars in Manhattan!



      MAD Men: An interview with the brains behind many a MAD parody!


      You can be nasty when you are young, but you really have to be older to achieve bitterness.-Fran Lebowitz


      Authors in Bathing Suits


      The Martian label means everything and nothing, since I think all writers are Martians.-Martin Amis


      The D was missing from the sign so that it now read bor ers. - Wings, Lorrie Moore
       
       

      The greatest gift is the passion for reading. It is cheap, it consoles, it distracts, it excites.- Elizabeth Hardwick



      “An Egoless Practice”: Tantric Art



      Childhood is so protean. - Norman Mailer



      Odd Corners Round About Brooklyn
       
      With humor you have to look out for traps.-James Thurber

      America’s Newest Sweetheart


      He’d take me to restaurants and things. Showed me jujitsu in a restaurant. 
      Threw me over his head..-Robert Frost


      How to Sharpen Pencils: A Demonstration



      I cut the cord. I said, I will do only what I can do, express what I am—that’s why 
       I used the first person-Henry Miller
       


      I fell asleep and woke up the next morning with the book there in bed beside me, along with my wife.-Raymond Carver
       
       
       
      Which do you prefer: Gatsby (1926) or Gatsby (seemingly 2026)?

       
      I think the writer ought to help the reader as much as he can without damaging 


      It is more horrifying when something is insinuated - Javier Marías


      Saddam Hussein's publishing deal, Singing Babushki, The Bard of McSorley's, Cupcakes or "Fairy Cakes"?


      I have a longing, not for obscurity—I'm too egotistical for that—but for peace, and freedom from meddling.-Saul Bellow


      In the land of the free, one sentence must be as good as another because that is democracy.-Gore Vidal


      I would gladly have traded what I have tried to say for what came off my tongue, naturally. -William Carlos Williams


      • Writing describes a range of activities, like farming. Plowing virgin fields—writing—demands freshness.-David Mitchell
         
         
         
        Selected Letters of William S. Burroughs


        Truth is the most important thing that there is, and if you lose sight of it, your writing will be destroyed in the end. - William Trevor...


         
        A writer has the duty to be good, not lousy; true, not false; lively, not dull; accurate, not full of error – EB White


        I’ve always liked the uniform of a poet. I’ve gone through some nice pajamas - Kay Ryan


        Even more than appearing clever, the writer had wanted to be profound.-The Epigraph


        On LSD: The thing is, it's information—extraordinary and deeply relieving information.-Robert Creeley


        An electrical impulse zings out ricochets in meta-galactic orbits - Itinerary, Adrienne Rich:


        Today I’m a five-o’clock-in-the-morning riser. Although I do stare at the wall a lot – Samuel R. Delany


        Lunch Poems, Mixtapes, Beats


        You can be nasty when you are young, but you really have to be older to achieve bitterness.-Fran Lebowitz


        Authors in Bathing Suits


        The Martian label means everything and nothing, since I think all writers are Martians.-Martin Amis


        The D was missing from the sign so that it now read bor ers. - Wings, Lorrie Moore


        The greatest gift is the passion for reading. It is cheap, it consoles, it distracts, it excites.- Elizabeth Hardwick

         


        Childhood is so protean. - Norman Mailer


        Odd Corners Round About Brooklyn


        With humor you have to look out for traps.-James Thurber

        He’d take me to restaurants and things. Showed me jujitsu in a restaurant. Threw me over his head..-Robert Frost


        How to Sharpen Pencils: A Demonstration


        I cut the cord. I said, I will do only what I can do, express what I am—that’s why I used the first person-Henry Miller


         
        I fell asleep and woke up the next morning with the book there in bed beside me, along with my wife.-Raymond Carver


        Which do you prefer: Gatsby (1926) or Gatsby (seemingly 2026)?


        I think the writer ought to help the reader as much as he can without damaging what he wants to say.-James Jones


        It is more horrifying when something is insinuated - Javier Marías


        Saddam Hussein's publishing deal, Singing Babushki, The Bard of McSorley's, Cupcakes or "Fairy Cakes"?


        I have a longing, not for obscurity—I'm too egotistical for that—but for peace, and freedom from meddling.-Saul Bellow


        In the land of the free, one sentence must be as good as another because that is democracy.-Gore Vidal


        I would gladly have traded what I have tried to say for what came off my tongue, naturally. -William Carlos Williams

         Allen Ginsberg on William Carlos Williams - 1975 transcription - today on the Allen Ginsberg blog - Force takes the form of intelligence, and this is my tragedy—and it always has been from the beginning.-Jean Cocteau
        Puritan and Protestant America carries less weight in Illinois than in Massachusetts.-Saul Bellow

        Have a great Memorial Day Weekend! Posters from the Paris Protests, 1968

        Once you elevate yourself to the rank of a cultural institution, you're in for a lot of trouble.-Saul Bellow

        THE RACCOON HAVE GIVEN HIM THE UPPER HAND.-Constructive Abandonment

        Productivity is a relative matter. And it's really insignificant.-Joyce Carol Oates


        I was also fifteen and a half, a virgin consumed with the mysteries of sex, of forbidden encounters.-The Fetish


        As technology advances in complexity and scope, fear becomes more primitive – Don DeLillo


        Before I began publishing, I’d imagined that pointing out my thefts would be the occupation of enemies.-Jonathan Lethem


        Why does everything about the National League look smaller on the TV?-October Baseball and the Meaning of Hurt

         
         
        A long project is like a secret houseguest, hidden in your study, waiting to be fed and visited. - John Hollander

        Isolation is a necessity, also an acute loneliness and a slight sense of rejection. - J.P. Donleavy


        What We’re Loving: Bejeweled Ostriches, Robot Dancers
        If I were in George’s place, I would kill myself. I’m less than George. George is heroic.-Christopher Isherwood


        I wrote my obituary soon after my college graduation. It seemed as necessary as knowing my Social Security number.


        Nothing interferes with my writing except my irresolute character and limitations of my talent.-Elizabeth Hardwick


        I told her I was broke. “Asshole,” she grumbled, and then went around the corner to buy her cigarettes.-314 Bedford


        Modesty is in order, God knows—facing the universe of sound.-William Carlos Williams


        What happens if you make a distinction between what you tell your friends and what you tell your Muse? – Allen Ginsberg


        Typewriter erotica, Wodehouse Nonsense, Egan twitter story (literally), is Philip Roth crazy?


        I have this rubber stamp. It says, IT’S A JOKE YOU FUCKING MORON. I never use it – Kay Ryan


        I believe that more is more. I believe that less is less, fat fat, thin thin and enough is enough.-Stanley Elk


        RT : You should never believe a writer if he tells you why he has certain recurring themes.--Kazuo Ishiguro, ...
        Reconstructing Harry Crews


        Most great stories come not from things that are invented, but from perfect knowledge, close observation.-James Salter



        Letters are originally little pictures, so let's combine graphic imagery, photographic imagery, with words. - John Updike...


        One must be pitiless about this matter of “mood.” In a sense, the writing will create the mood.-Joyce Carol Oates



        It’s the way folks used to feel about fellatio in the good old days. “Me? Never heard of it. Disgusting.”-Philip Roth



        On EB White: "The man and his work are so nearly one that, try as we will, we cannot tell the dancer from the dance."


        On “Poetic Dope”: I don’t take laudanum. I take pains. - John Hollander



        The Thief’s Journal



        Shelf-Conscious


        I so love the intensity of people that I can't let anything stop until it's literally exhaustion.-Robert Creeley

        "The origin of the word gossip is ‘god-sibling’? It’s the talk between people who are godparents to the same child."



        Behold an elitist. - Robertson Davies



        All experience is good for writers - except physical pain. - William Trevor



        Siegfried and Roy: Masters of the Kitchen
         
         
         
        Style results more from what a person is than from what he knows – EB White

         
         
        Kate Beaton's Anne Brontë tells it like it is: "That guy was an asshole!"


        I wonder if originality isn’t a motor powered by the two poles of the already done and the new twist.-David Mitchell


        Sex and Salter


        Any god we have is out there. I’d hate to think there's nothing. When it comes to God, I cherish doubt.-Louise Erdrich


        A needle or the sight of blood may be as terrifying to a North Dakotan as a bomb is to the Vietnamese.-Jerzy Kosinski


        Great Gatsby trailer (fail), required reading, commas

         
         
         
        One never knows enough about characters in real life to put them into novels.-Graham Greene
         
        I have the sense that if I push too hard or too far into memory I’ll come apart. Total self-loss.-Harold Brodkey

         
         
        If you get paid for being crazy, if you can get paid for running amok . . . I call that sane.–Hunter S. Thompson

         
         
        For God's sake, keep your eyes open. – William S. Burroughs


        Nothing that happens to us after twenty is as free from self-consciousness, we have the vocation to write.-John Updike
         
         
        What we were prior to our latest batch of technology is, in a way, unknowable.-William Gibson

         
         
         
        It’s awfully hard to know what your position is, why you’re being smiled at while you’re walking your dog.-Ann Beattie

         
         
         
        A “loud color” is a common phrase, but the things that are said in literature are always the same.-Jorge Luis Borges

         
         
         
         
        My secret investigation of disturbing, sexually charged things and my confusing fantasies were legitimized.-Dennis C
         
         
        Writers: read Pulphead. That John Jeremiah Sullivan is good. Damn good.
        Retweeted by


        Necessity is the mother of invention. – Kurt Vonnegut


         
        It isn’t always the things constructed most according to plan that are the most successful - T.S. Eliot
         
         
        I’m always glad of anybody that says anything awful. I can use it. – Robert Frost

         
        Humorlessness is a positively morbid quality. - William Meredith


        Arthur Miller Reads Death of a Salesman, February 1955
         
         
         
         
         
         
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